


Revelations of a Broken Soul

by SunlightOnTheWater



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel & Vessel Interactions, Episode: s05e13 The Song Remains the Same, Gen, Season/Series 05, Temporary Character Death - Winchesters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 02:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10958217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SunlightOnTheWater/pseuds/SunlightOnTheWater
Summary: There's a story, almost older than the universe, about two brothers who loved each other, and ultimately betrayed each other. Millennia later, neither one is willing to falter in the face of their destiny, even if it isn't one they particularly want to enact.AU starting at "The Song Remains The Same" where Michael meets Dean and begins to doubt. Meanwhile Sam encounters Lucifer each night in his dreams, the two of them wrestling with questions about destiny and fathers they don't understand.





	Revelations of a Broken Soul

**Author's Note:**

> So, it has been a while since I've written anything in the Supernatural fandom, but this story has been planned out for a while so I'm going to give writing it a try and hope for the best. Wish me luck, and thanks for coming along on the ride!

Dean ducked under Uriel's blow, pushing a young and relatively innocent version of his father away from the determined angel. In the process, he caught a glimpse of his brother and Anna. The two of them were struggling over Ruby's handy little demon killing knife. Sam was holding his own against the angel who'd been their friend right up to the point where she'd returned to Heaven and decided the best course of action was to make sure the Winchester brothers had never existed. Uriel backed off a step, likely trying to figure out how to go around Dean to complete his job more quickly instead of going through him, so Dean was looking directly at his little brother when Anna decided their struggle had gone on long enough, ripped a pipe off of the wall, and shoved it straight through Sam's chest, breaking ribs as if they were toothpicks.

 _"Sam!"_ The scream tore itself out of his throat too late. It was laced with the agonizing knowledge that he had yet to stop shunning his little brother for something that was as much Dean's fault as it was Sam's. Sam gasped once, eyes wide and almost relieved, before he crumpled to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. While Dean was still shaken by his little brother's sudden, violent death, John shoved his way by to lunge at Anna. The red headed angel had turned her attention towards Mary, so she didn't see the danger coming, but Uriel did. Anna's accomplice grabbed John by the back of his shirt and flung him through a window, leaving Dean as the last man standing to take down two angels.

"I'm really sorry for this," Anna said, sounding anything but remorseful. She stepped forward, stretching a delicate hand out towards Mary, who was staring, frozen, at the red head. Dean tried to lung for Anna but Uriel's hand wrapped like a steel band around his bicep pulled him to an abrupt stop. He could only watch and struggle against the tight grip as Anna approached his mother.

 _"Anna_. _"_ John Winchester's voice reverberated with otherness as he suddenly appeared in front of the window Uriel had just thrown him through. Anna spun to face him, her swirling red-gold hair not managing to hide to shock on her face.

"Michael," Anna breathed in disbelief and Dean felt his heartbeat stutter. There, standing right in front of him, was the angel that wanted to wear him to prom for an old western style showdown with Lucifer. Michael stretched his hand out and Anna screamed as her body lit up from the inside in red and gold, burning away to nothing more than a pile of dark ash on the floor of the garage. Dean's stomach twisted uncomfortably at that. Maybe Anna hadn't been friend to her or Sam since she'd returned to Heaven, but they'd been close once and he'd liked her. She hadn't deserved to be burnt alive by an archangel, even if she'd done the unforgivable by killing Sam. Distantly, Dean wondered if this was how Sam had felt when they'd killed Ruby.

Uriel's hand dropped away from Dean's arm the moment Michael turned to look at them and he fell to his knees as if he planned on begging for mercy. "Michael, I am sorry. I didn't know," he informed the archangel.

Michael's expression was impassive as he said, "Goodbye, Uriel." He snapped his fingers and Dean braced himself for a dramatic spray of blood and skin and bone shards. Instead Uriel vanished, leaving behind an empty space where he'd knelt before.

Mary broke the awkward silence that followed, demanding, "What did you do to John?" Her eyes were sharp and determined, her tone was chilly, and Dean found himself wondering how much of their mother Sam had actually inherited without knowing her.

"John is fine," Michael told her without looking away from Dean. The intensity of the archangel's gaze kept Dean frozen, unable to move across the room to cradle Sam's body close.

"Who..." Mary began to ask and then paused, expression calculating. "What are you?" Michael turned to face her then, lifted two fingers to lips to shush her. Then he reached out and pressed those same two fingers to her forehead. Mary's eyelids fluttered and then she crumpled gracelessly to the floor the same way Bobby had when he and Dean had used a ritual to summon Castiel.

"I would say that this conversation is long overdue," Michael said then, turning back to Dean.

"I don't want to talk," Dean replied, flexing trembling hands into fists. "I want you to fix Sam."

Michael tilted his head to one side for a moment, like a puppy confronted with a set of words it didn't understand, and asked, "Why would you want your brother repaired?"

Dean stumbled a little as the insidious voice in his head piped up to say, _"Why do you want your brother alive? After all, he's the one who let the Devil out of his cage because he wouldn't listen to you. I mean, you went to Hell for the kid and he couldn't just follow one little order._ Then he shook his head, letting the thoughts drain away like water off a duck's back. "He's my little brother, my responsibility," Dean told the archangel. He was supposed to protect Sam, even if his little brother didn't want to be protected, and sometimes that meant bringing Sam back from the dead when he was too late to do anything else.

"As Lucifer is my responsibility," Michael said solemnly. "First we'll talk. Then I will restore your brother."

"Okay," Dean said, feeling as if each breath was difficult to pull in as he stared at Sam's still chest. "Fine." He jerked his gaze away from his little brother to meet Michael's borrowed eyes. "Let's start with why you're in my father."

"His bloodline has always produced my vessels, so I had only to gain his consent in order to save you."

"I guess they oversold me being your only vessel," Dean replied bitterly, reminded of Zachariah's insistence that only he could house Heaven's commander.

"It is true that others can house me for a time, but only your soul is truly compatible with my grace. Anyone else housing me would be destroyed after a day. I need you to consent so that I may effectively deal with the threat my brother poses to creation."

"By killing him?"

"It is what my father commanded." Dean swallowed hard at that. His father had insisted that he kill Sammy if it looked like his little brother was falling to the wrong side of the tracks, but he hadn't been able to obey that particular request.

"How can you be willing to do that?" Dean demanded, eyes falling back to Sam's corpse. Despite the possibility that it might have been better for everyone involved if he would have killed Sam before the Devil had been set free, he knew he wouldn't have been able to do it. He loved his little brother too much to put a bullet in Sam's head.

"I do not wish to do this any more than you wish to kill your brother," Michael admitted impassively. "I love my brother."

"But you're still going to kill him," Dean interrupted.

"Because it is right, and because I must obey my father's commands."

"Because you're the good son," Dean spit out derisively, feeling rage begin to boil in his chest. "Been there, done that, buddy, and guess what? It's a dead end road." He'd faithfully followed every one of his father's commands, taken everything John told him as the gospel truth, and that had helped push them to this moment, where he and Sam couldn't even speak to one another without Dean spitting out accusations.

"You think you know better than my father?" Michael questioned in a voice like thunder. "You are one unimportant little man. What makes you think that you get to choose?"

"Maybe I don't know better than God," Dean snapped once that rage twisting inside him stopped choking him. "But I think that if he'd wanted perfect little robots for children he would have thrown away the whole concept of free will."

"Angels do not have free will," Michael growled back. "We are meant only to obey our father's commands."

"So how did Lucifer disobey?" Dean challenged. "Or Anna? Even Gabriel said no to this whole mess."

"In doing so they have turned their backs on our father. They will all be punished," Michael told him, voice heavy.

"I think God would have punished them himself if he didn't want them to choose," Dean retorted.

"My father does, through me. I carry out his will."

Dean watched a muscle tic in Michael's jaw and knew he'd hit a nerve, maybe even stumbled upon something that the archangel was trying not to think about. "Then maybe God's just some deadbeat dad who isn't capable of carrying out his own punishments. I mean, good fathers don't ask their sons to kill their younger siblings."

Dean realized he'd gone a step too far a moment later when Michael slammed him into a wall, holding him off the ground by the collar of his shirt. His feet flailed helplessly in the air as he found himself staring into Michael's cold eyes. "Don't presume to know anything about my father or His plans," the archangel snarled at him, lip curling.

Dean, in typical Winchester fashion, didn't know when to shut up so he snapped, "I do know enough about the Bible to understand that He gave us free will. Maybe you have to kill your brother, but I don't have to let you use me to do it."

"Free will is an illusion," Michael scoffed in response, dropping Dean to the ground. "Think of a million random acts of chance that led to John and Mary being born, meeting, falling in love, and having the two of you. Think of the million random choices you make, and yet how each and every one of them leads you closer to your destiny. Do you know why that is? Because it's not random, it's not chance, it's a plan that is playing itself out perfectly."

"Not perfectly," Dean replied, mustering what little surety he had left and using it to make his voice firm. "Otherwise Sam and I would have already said yes."

"It's only a matter of time." Michael's expression was perfectly calm again, as if all his angry had simply drained away. "Because there is no choice. We were always going to end up here." Dean grit his teeth, eyes watering with tears as Michael hauntingly echoed what Lucifer had told Dean in the future Zachariah had sent him to. The one where the Devil had worn his little brother like his best suit and future Dean had been a major dick. "You can't fight City Hall, Dean," Michael said serenely, ignoring the scowl that earned him. Then the archangel crouched, reaching out a hand to brush it across Sam's forehead.

"Watch me," Dean snarled as his little brother vanished, the bloodstained pipe that Anna had stabbed him with clattering to the ground.

That statement earned him an indulgent smile as Michael stood, turning back to Dean. "Your little brother is home, safe and sound. I will return him to you and clear your parents' minds of this event. They will remember nothing of what has happened here."

"You can't do that," Dean protested. "She'll walk right into the nursery."

"It was always going to play out that way," Michael told him with complete certainty, stepping forward and pressing two fingers gently to the center of Dean's forehead. Before he could protest that statement, Dean found himself standing in he and Sam's motel room, his little brother staring at him with wide, worried eyes.

"What just happened?" Sam asked, confusion written all across his face.

Dean thought about Sam's body lying still and dead on the floor of the garage and Michael's complete certainty that they were always heading towards this and snapped, "I don't want to talk about it." He regretted his tone a moment later when Sam flinched.

His little brother stood, expression completely closed off, and said, "I, uh, I'll give you some space." Then he hurried out of the room before Dean could protest. He didn't return until long after Dean had curled up in bed, pretending to sleep.


End file.
